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http://www.videogamelibrarian.com/2008/05/virtual-console-release-of-earthbound.html
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Oh… hell… yeah!
Justin, can you explain why EarthBound is such a well-regarded game? I feel like it should be right up my alley in some ways (JRPG is my favorite genre and I enjoy the quirky, cartoonish, ultra-Japanese style of games like Katamari Damacy). But for whatever reason EarthBound doesn’t excite me. Maybe it’s just not my cup of tea, but I’d be interested in a fan’s take on why it’s so great.
You pretty much hit it with your description of what you like, it’s quirky, cartoonish and has an ultra-Japanese style.
But it’s also very American and has a off-kilter sense of humor that I find very fun.
It was also the first RPG I ever played that didn’t involve knights and wizards and dragons and what not. It was set in the modern day and had kids using baseball bats and mental telepathy against a host of crazy alien (and some not-so-alien, like the dirty hippies) enemies.
Oh, and the music is bitchin’.
Earthbound has always had a little place in my heart as well. I don’t regard it as well as Final Fantasy 3 or 2, but Earthbound is right in there with them at number 3. I think an entire remake of Earthbound would be perfect. JRPGs tend to turn me off, yet it’s hard to not come across one.
So far as I can follow, there are two sequels to Earthbound, never released in the USA. That upsets me like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games barely trickling out of KOEI’s inner sanctum.
Actually, the first Earthbound (dubbed Earhtbound Zero by US Earthbound fans) was released for the NES in Japan. Nintendo actually did translate it for a US release, but the translation took so long that by the time it was ready the SNES was already entrenched and Nintendo didn’t want to release any more NES games.
The sequel was released for the GBA a few years ago and right now there are no plans to bring it to the US, because again, the DS in entrenched and the GBA is as good as dead. There’s no official translation this time though, but the fan community is working on it.
And with more production, a new Earthbound game could be gold.
It’s about time! Sometimes I feel like Nintendo of America has a bitter vendetta against Earthbound since they put so much into marketing it and it didn’t sell well. They actually went out of their way to take the Earthbound demo out of Brawl (it was there in the japanese version), which is ludicrous. I’ve been waiting 12, 13 years for its sequel, and it’s really disappointing that there are no plans to bring it here. I’ll settle for the fan translation, but I still feel betrayed.